


But Trepidation of the Spheres

by perbe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, mentions of Orion Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 21:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2040378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perbe/pseuds/perbe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dimly, Regulus hears himself ask, "Have I been brave, Kreacher?"</p><p>A take on the last day and a half of the brief life of Regulus Black--who died a Death Eater, was discovered to be a hero, but should have been remembered as a boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Trepidation of the Spheres

**Author's Note:**

> So let us melt, and make no noise,  
> No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move.

**October, 1979**

Sirius shows up for the funeral in the sharp twist of Walburga’s lips, in the bruises under Regulus’s eyes. 

No one else seems to notice. He isn’t expected. After all, he was disinherited and this is no place for him. Regulus is inclined to agree, but Sirius—he’s been gone for two years—he hasn’t been gone for so long. Surely, surely—

A movement from his right notifies him that his mother’s reaching for her wand. The speeches are over; it is time to pay tribute to the dead. As Regulus raises his wand with the rest, he tries and fails to seek out Orion from among the constellations. The bright wand-light all around him drowns out even the depth of the night and with it, the stars. He swallows the lump in his throat and sends his light travelling after the rest. And for a moment, they all watch the silvery orbs of light drift into the sky. Then it’s over and all sound comes rushing back as they crowd into line to lay their white carnations by his father’s grave.

They are last in line. It might be downright symbolic.

(Neither of them look for very long at the man in the coffin. Soon, they won’t have time to regret this; as they lay down their carnations, a stone lid creeps up around the man—the man’s body, Regulus thinks angrily, now he can’t see the lights, what’s the point of this if he can’t see the lights and they can’t guide him to wherever he’s supposed to go?)

Regulus offers his arm to his mother and she takes it and their eyes meet.

His mother is not a beautiful woman. She is striking for all the wrong reasons—lips misshapen in folds left behind by sharp words, nose thin and long and beaklike. She has his grey eyes and jet black hair and looks every bit as worn as Regulus feels and her features have no grace with which to carry it; the harrowed expression lingers at the forefront of her face and ages her by centuries. The folds of her face intensify as she looks at him. He wonders who she sees. 

One by one, the guests disapparate. They are sepulchral in their black cloaks and black robes and the loud pops of apparation ring discordant in the empty woods. And then they really are empty—all the guests have gone.

Finally, she asks, “Do you know what this means?”

“I’m the head of our family now,” Regulus replies. “I’m the oldest living male of our surname.”

She squeezes his arm. Gently or not, he doesn’t know. He hasn’t ever been able to tell. 

A breeze passes through the trees. The susurration of the leaves nearly drowns out her next words.

“You look exhausted.”

Neither of them have cried yet—nor will they, in the official version of their lives.

“So do you, Mother. We should head back.”

His mother’s lips twist. The hollows of her cheeks deepen. She looks at him and tries to tell him something through her gaze and he doesn’t quite catch it.

“It’s cold,” he says.

So they go.

-

When he was little, Regulus thought his father was larger than life. Part of it might have been all the things he knew, or the way his presence filled a room.

Regulus wonders if his father ever felt small, or if this thin papery feeling came from his mother. He doubts it. Grimmauld Place hadn’t enough space for the two of them. Restricted space suits Regulus well, he’s slim and quick eyed and only ever sometimes quick to speak, and maybe it’s because whatever dimension his parents passed on was all spent on Sirius.

(Really, lots of things were given to Sirius—birthright and bravery and a fierce and precise sort of cruelty. The last time they spoke Sirius was too angry to get out more than a few coherent words in a row, but he managed to choke out an “I hate you.”)

When he was little—Regulus stops the thought and analyzes its facets—maybe Regulus is still little.

-

Grimmauld Place 12 had three house elves, and there used to be one for the mistress and one for the master, one for Sirius and Regulus. Now there is only Kreacher. (Two got too old and so his mother added them to the collection by the door. She left no blood behind. She didn’t leave a body, either. When Bella gets bored during her visits, she makes Kreacher dust them.)

Kreacher isn’t back yet. Regulus calls for him to brew some tea and hears his voice stir up the dust from in-between the floorboards. He wonders where it all comes from. His mother hardly leaves her room anymore. Neither does Regulus, when he’s not out doing the Dark Lord’s bidding. And there is the rest of his life laid out for him. He supposes the Dark Lord is invincible and in time, he’ll win this war and the next and the next. Regulus imagines living the rest of his life watching his voice stir dust from the cracks in the floor.

“You’re behaving strangely,” his mother tells him. She’s watching him with her grey eyes and her thin lips tuck into hollows so deep their corners disappear entirely.

“I’ll make the tea,” Regulus says. “Would you like chrysanthemum or Darjeeling?”

His mother goes on scrutinizing him. “Neither. Leave it to Kreacher when he returns.”

“Mother, are you angry?”

The words don’t make sense together until he hears the silence that follows. Regulus is the warlock with the hairy heart, except his heart is still safely enclosed within his ribcage. It’s a good thing he won’t be alive to see the damage it sustained to so as to make it beat so heavily.

There’s a hand at the dip between his shoulder-blades. It’s no steadier than his own.  

“I’m not angry,” his mother says. “It was for the Dark Lord. You swore your loyalty to him.”

“But Father—“ Regulus takes a deep breath before continuing, softer now. “Father died while I was gone. I volunteered Kreacher for it without asking either of you.”

“You said you understood. You’re the head of this family now, Regulus.”

That’s the problem, Regulus thinks. The problem is he always thinks he understands but then he doesn’t, not really. Not when it comes to anything important. Because he hasn’t thought about doing anything with his time during the day, before the mark on his arm writhes and burns. Because he still wishes he could be as strong as Bellatrix. Because he when the Dark Lord asked for a house elf, Regulus volunteered Kreacher. He’s not sure if this new vicelike fear he’s nurturing makes up for any of it.

“Do you understand?” his mother asks him.

“I do,” he says. “I just thought—“

He doesn’t know what he thought. Neither does she.

“What did you think?”

“Are you angry?” he asks again.

Walburga looks like Sirius when she smirks. “I’m not angry. I’m grieving. But you need to understand, Regulus. The Black family name is yours to carry on. You can bring our family to new heights, yet you can tarnish it, too.”

The dust swirls around their feet. Kreacher’s usually around to clean it up. Kreacher has been gone two days. If his father hadn’t died, the dust would still be undisturbed. If Kreacher doesn’t come back (but of course he will, Regulus ordered him to come back) perhaps it will even fill up this empty house.

“I understand, Mother,” Regulus says.

-

When he was little, he researched. His namesake (little king, and ironically enough, heart of the lion), the true source of the dust that collects between the floorboards (our cells, us, us, us).

Because he may still be little, he still researches. Frightful witches and wizards (Morgan le Fray, Elizabeth Bathory, Grindelwald, this new Dark Lord they serve) and their raisons d’être (greater good, why should we hide from muggles, eternal life, not in that order).

He has a bookshelf in his room. It is disorganized. Old letters stick out at odd angles between the dog-eared pages of the books. There’s an odd quill sticking out here and there. An uneaten chocolate frog from two Christmases ago. It is the only disorganized thing in Regulus’s room, and he has read through all its messy books.

“Kreacher, will you bring me a book from the library?” It’s spirit hour, he can’t sleep, his mother is sleeping.

There is silence. Kreacher isn’t back. Regulus slips out his room and slides down the bannister because the stairs creak and the Persian rug at the end of the staircase is thick enough for him to land on it soundlessly. This is another product of research; even if it isn’t his own, it might as well be, now. He sits down at the foot of the stairs and considers spending the night there. The walls of Grimmauld Place are enchanted to keep sound from leaking in and spilling out, but he can see the sparse trail of streetlights leading into the night.

I have exited the official version of my life, Regulus knows. His eyes remain dry anyway as he spends spirit hour eagle-sprawled over the rug.

-

Traveling during spirit hour ensures a safe return, he’s read, but it’s just a silly old myth. When he stands up, his neck pops. Then he crackles his knuckles and his pops his elbows and he can’t pop anything else so he leaves his joints as is: feeling slightly out of place, perhaps in another’s body. He ghosts to the library anyway and sits in the chair closest to the fire.

Regulus has never researched himself. There are no books on his veins or his slightly out of place bones. Usually you start with books, when you want to research something. Books with works cited inked in the back that lead you to more books. He looks at the green veins in his hands and traces them up to the crook of his elbow where it disappears until the bare sketch in the shadows under his left eye. There are no words written in his blood—blood is for runes, for old dark magic. His veins offer him no answers.

(What ties eternal life, the greater good, and muggles together? Why does he have to know? Better not, it’s too late, Death Eaters can’t just resign on whim—)

He pulls out books on Grindelwald, muggle and wizard conflicts—he catches sight of something red in the mantelpiece mirror and flinches, but it’s only the curtains—on magic so dark it encroaches on your bones. Perhaps flame searing through the wick and fashioning new features, soot-stained, the wrong colors.

Kreacher stumbles into the library at nearly six to find Regulus leafing through Secrets of the Darkest Arts, his face thin and wan in the firelight.

-

There are any number of things he can’t voice. There are any number of things are dangerous, even if they’re only thought. Tongues slip. But there was screaming, and pale fleshy limbs, and all of it was nauseating. A shade of green so sickly he shivers when sunlight streams through leaves.

(“Listen, cousin,” said Bella.

“I don’t want to,” Regulus said. Corpses strewn before them. The Dark Mark was curling itself into shape in the sky.

“You _will_ listen. They deserved it. They’re filthy. They’re weak. It’s the natural order of things. Sooner or later, the muggles will face a problem they can’t solve because they’re so ignorant, you see? We’re helping them in the long run.”

“You _tortured—_ “

Bellatrix threw back her head and laughed a long, breathless laugh. The veins in her neck were purple, nearly black. “I’m collecting my due. They’ve been very wicked. They can’t even thank me for helping them. I don’t think they even wanted to open the door for me.”

“Of course they didn’t—“

“It’s just for fun, Reg. Lighten up. I’m making a report to the Dark Lord tonight. Shall I tell him of your…hesitation?”)

Horcrux, Regulus allows himself to think.

-

Kreacher is limping. His skin is ashen and his eyes can’t seem to focus. He sways where he stands. When he speaks, his voice is almost indistinguishable from the crackling of the fire.

“Master? May Kreacher sit?”

Regulus says, “Yes, of course. I’ll get you some water.”

-

They apparate into the cave. Regulus is already dead. Which is hard to grasp when his heart’s hammering away in his chest and his breath is white in the morning air. Kreacher’s hand is cold as ice and twice as brittle. There is a cut on Kreacher’s hand, made by the Dark Lord. Regulus lets go of it to run his hands along the stone wall of the cave. The air smells of salt. He hasn’t been to the ocean for a long time. The air also smells of skulking shadows. He can hardly see a thing, but he can hear the lake lapping against the stones.   

“Is it here?” Regulus asks. There’s a notch, almost, in the magic of the place. “Lumos.” The wandlight doesn’t do much good, but it’s familiar.

“Master please—“

“It is,” Regulus continues. He reaches up and feels the chain—damp and heavy in his hand. He pulls. There’s a gurgle from the lake. Then, a boat emerges. Regulus half-expects the Inferi to start crawling out in search of the source of that noise; he can see the ripples traveling from shore, endlessly. He breathes in, brine and undead. He is dead, too, he reminds himself, it doesn’t matter if he steps into the boat—

“Master musn’t,” Kreacher croaks. His breathing is sharp and it echoes off the cavern walls for what seems like miles. “Master can still turn back. What will the Mistress say if Master doesn’t return? Her heart will break. Master musn’t do this.”

Regulus steps into the boat. It rocks from side to side. He clutches at the prow to steady himself. His fingers brush over the engraving of a skull. The boat is shaped like a leaf, veins and all. There are things in the lake, pale shapes, the Inferi. He is still alive. He can feel the grain of the prow against his palms. No, he is already dead. It’s been decided from the moment he first thought of betraying the Dark Lord—tongues slip and Occlumency can only do so much. Maybe if his mental barriers hold up, he has a year, five years, a decade, before the Dark Lord returns to the cave with another house elf (not Kreacher, no) and finds Regulus’s magic embedded in the walls.

Horcruxes, Regulus reminds himself. The locket around his neck is his mother’s. It feels heavier than it should. Soul splitting. Murder. Kreacher’s brittle hands. He must remember why he’s here: if witches and wizards are obligated to rule over muggles because they know better, he must do what he can because he knows of the locket. The horcrux. Bellatrix asking, isn’t this fun? Green light from their wands.

He murmurs, “Mother’s just a small part of this, Kreacher. You’re a good elf. You’re a good friend. You tried to keep me from the island, didn’t you? You could have apparated me there.”

“Kreacher tried,” the elf chokes out. Tears are running down his sunken cheeks. “Master, please, Mistress is waking up now. What is Kreacher telling Mistress when he goes back?”

“She’ll think I’m on another raid,” Regulus says feverishly. “She won’t know. Kreacher, I have to do this. I’m already here. This is an order—get on the boat. Quickly.”

“Master—Master always thinks of the loopholes,” Kreacher whispers. And Kreacher does get on the boat. He does it quickly, too quickly. The boat is tipping again, but somehow Regulus knows it won’t tip over. He’s not so sure if that will hold true for the return trip. It’s a good thing, then, perhaps, that he won’t ever have to know.

“Kreacher is begging Master to go back.”

Regulus imagines white fingers caressing the hull of the boat. There are no paddles. It glides along the water’s surface with barely a ripple. If he listens hard enough, he can hear the mist trailing behind them. “I want to go back, but I can’t.”

“Master can. Kreacher can apparate him. Mistress will be wondering where Master is. Master, Master’s father—“

“Stop trying to convince me to go back. Please.”

“Kreacher promised Mistress to keep Master safe.”

Regulus thinks he understands at last. “My orders take precedence, though, don’t they?”

Kreacher’s silence is answer enough.

The boat drifts to the island, mist curling around it as it goes.

-

Mulciber likes to tell him about all the different things people do before they die. Mulciber likes to tell everyone. He’s a good story-teller. He has a velvety voice and frames the most grotesque of recounts with measured pauses and inflections that can draw anyone in. Sometimes he acts it out with exaggerated gestures and sound effects, things that’d make anything funny. Regulus stands to the back of the crowd around him and tries not to listen. But Mulciber has him hook line and sinker, and he knows it.

“So he stares at me all, all quizzical like, and goes, ‘But you handsome, charming, brilliant, bloody fantastic with the ladies—(there’s a good humored _get on with it, Mulciber_ )—chap, I _can’t_ die. I—(Mulciber lies across the wooden table and makes his eyes go wide. They all laugh because they’re in a pub and anyone can hear them, and somehow that makes it alright)—have it down here, see?”

Regulus pretends he’s sipping his firewhiskey as Mulciber mimes taking something out of his pocket.

“I’ve got a dentertist appointment today, and, and a golpher game. It, it doesn’t say it anywhere on here that I’m going to die. I’ll, I’ll let you flip through—“

“That’s a load of dung, Mulciber,” Regulus says, later.

Mulciber laughs and meets his eyes. “How would you know? You weren’t there, you big ole Mumsie’s boy. Always sitting at home, eh? There’s our little Reggie.”

His words are followed by a smattering of snorts and gripes. Regulus looks away.

-

Kreacher stares at him with eyes pale as smoke. Regulus considers telling him to look away and decides against it.

They’ve arrived at the island. It’s beautiful in the way shattered glass on the sidewalk makes you stop and stare, in the way blood curls around lifeless bony wrists. It is a mass of crystals too uneven to be anything but natural, and too isolated to be anything but unnatural. They remind him of bones. The boat nestles between two jutting crystals, a ribcage. Regulus uses one to pull himself onto the island.

He looks back. “It has to be drunk, doesn’t it?”

“Kreacher could drink it,” Kreacher says quietly.

“You won’t.”

He climbs to the center of the island. The basin has an undertone of lavender. The cup is a curved shell. Already knowing it will do nothing, he reaches for the potion at the bottom and his hand presses against a barrier. Regulus grits his teeth. Kreacher watches him go through all the counterjinxes he knows, sweat beading on his forehead. After he runs out, he moves onto things like reducto and impotent Fiendfyre that burns itself out within seconds, golden chimeras feasting on each other. The crystal flashes red and grey and blue and nothing changes anyway, when he tries to empty out the contents of the basin with his cupped hands—the barrier is still there—he laughs, perhaps recklessly. Being dead, it appears, is a long way away from wishing to be in pain.

Regulus exhales. “You won’t tell anyone,” he orders Kreacher. “Not Mother. Not anyone.”

“Kreacher—Kreacher won’t, if Master orders him,” Kreacher promises. “Master—“

“No, listen to me,” Regulus says. There is more sharpness in him than he suspected. His slightly out of place everything has grated against his ligaments and sharpened them into cruel angles. They crowd into the cavities in his lungs and creep into his throat. “You won’t tell _anyone_. If anyone asks, I just walked out the door and ordered you not to follow. Do you understand? You can answer this question.”

“Kreacher understands,” Kreacher tells him.  

Kreacher’s hands are caught on the folds of his robes. He shakes them off as he paces around the basin. “Good. And when I drink this potion, I will hallucinate, won’t I? I’ll relive all the things I never wanted to remember. But you will force me to finish it all—this is an order. I don’t care if you have to shove my head into the basin and drown me in the potion—as long as I finish it.” Kreacher watches him as one would a ghost. Maybe he’s beginning to understand, too. Regulus’s hands are shaking again. He buries them in his sleeves, where Kreacher can’t see. “After that, after I’ve finished the potion, take the locket from the basin and replace it with the one around my neck. You need to hide the locket, the one from the basin, from Mother. You need to find some way to destroy it—any way at all—you _must_ destroy it.”

“Mistress’s heart,” Kreacher says. His voice snags on something lodged in his throat. Regulus does not stop to examine what it could be. “This could kill her.”

“I’m not done,” Regulus chocks out, “I’m sorry, Kreacher. I can’t stop—I’m sorry. You must not help me. If I faint, slap me awake. Anything. You must make sure I finish the potion. And then you must switch the lockets. After that, you’ll apparate back to Grimmauld Place, without me, no matter what happens to me. After I drink the potion, you aren’t to help me in any way. Mother—she should be up by then, she likes tea in the mornings—tell her I walked out of the house without a word. Tell her you think I might be on a raid. She’ll like that. She’ll accept that.”

“Is,” Kreacher starts, his voice thick. The thing lodged in his throat, it could be his words. “Is that all, Master?”

Regulus has more to say. He has so much more to say. Stop stalling, he tries to tell himself, but his mouth refuses to listen. It works wordlessly until he wrenches himself away from Kreacher, towards the basin.

“Yes. It is.” Regulus peers at the potion, at its myriad of colors. And he clasps his locket—his mother’s locket—in one clammy palm.

His name means heart of the lion.

He dips the seashell into the basin and brings it to his lips.

-

Mulciber has never told him about anyone drowning. It is a funny thing, really, the way he breathes water like it could be air, like if he closes his eyes just so, he could be lying on his back in a field of grass. There are winter-white hands on his arms. They are cool to the touch. He wonders how he could have ever been afraid of the shapes in the water.

Regulus wants to see Mulciber act this out. He wants to see if he can somehow pull off having all these hands gently carrying him into the lake. Hands like the tide.

Bellatrix will laugh, her head tossed back.

Sirius will learn of his death from the paper. Sirius has always read the paper, even if makes him stir-crazy. He even does the crossword.

Somewhere in London, Walburga sits up in her dressing gown and calls for a cup of tea, her voice stirring up dust from between the floorboards.

Dimly, Regulus hears himself ask, “Have I been brave, Kreacher?”

The answer comes from far away. From all around him. From crystals in hues he can’t describe, beautiful as bones at the muddy bottom of a lake. Bones growing like pond lilies.

“Master has been so, so, brave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Both the title of this one-shot and the lines of poetry from the beginning come from the poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne. 
> 
> Recommended listening music: Leave it Alone, by Broken Bells.
> 
> Major, major thanks to sturmfreii (Alyssa) for putting up with my gross sobbing, and Pam for wading through the unedited version.


End file.
